The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently developing specifications for forthcoming wireless communication systems, including Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems and LTE-Advanced systems. These systems will support a wide range of transmission bandwidths. 3GPP specifications for LTE systems, for example, define transmission bandwidths ranging from approximately 1 MHz to 20 MHz over a single LTE carrier. Likewise, 3GPP specifications for LTE-Advanced systems define transmission bandwidths up to 100 MHz through aggregation of up to five 20 MHz LTE component carriers.
Support of such large transmission bandwidths enables increased data rates and higher system throughput. In fact, current scheduling strategies suggest scheduling data transmissions with large bandwidths, along with higher order modulation, spatial multiplexing, and so on, in order to maximize system throughput (or at least in order to maximize system throughput while also meeting some fairness criterion). Maximum system throughput, however, will not generally coincide with maximum power efficiency at the mobile node. That is, current scheduling strategies maximize system throughput, but at the expense of increased energy consumption by the mobile node per data unit received.